


Aces in Hockey

by JessJesstheBest



Category: Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Tris, College AU, F/M, Getting Together, Hockey AU, asexual Four, beta'd by wonderful people I don't deserve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 03:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15134357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessJesstheBest/pseuds/JessJesstheBest
Summary: “I still have twenty minutes before your practice, Tris,” he reminded her.“No, the ice crew has twenty minutes before my practice to fix this mess your team left us.” She crossed her arms in an intimidating display no one who was that small should pull off. “But they can’t do that until you get off the ice.”Or Four and Tris are the captains for the men's and women's hockey teams at their college. They do enemies to friends to... something.





	Aces in Hockey

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: Total au!  
>  _Take your favorite characters and put them in a different universe._
> 
> Well, they're not my _favorite_ characters, but this is supposed to be a challenge...

Four was quiet by nature. He was a classic former victim of child abuse: strong, silent, enigmatic. He didn’t mean to be. He didn’t try. Any first-year psych student could tell you about the conditioning environment in his formative years to make him like this. And more than one first-year psych student had.

He was allowed to be quiet on the ice.

Not during actual play, obviously. He was the captain – constantly making calls to his team and conferring with coaches. But he stayed out on the ice after practice, letting everyone else go shower in the locker room as he made lazy circles on the ice. It was a calming cool-down, reminding him of times when he would spend hours on the pond just to be out of the house. He’d skate circles until his feet were way past aching and chew up the ice far past what was safe. He no longer had to worry about falling through the ice in the rink but there were other dangers.

“Please tell me your dramatic brooding is coming to a close. We do need the ice, you know.”

Four kept his head ducked, concealing the slight smile that he could feel quirking his face.

“Just because I’m the strong and silent type doesn’t mean every one of my actions is brooding,” he answered before turning to the voice.

She stood just inside the door on the ice. She was half-dressed in her skates and hockey pants but she hadn’t put her pads on yet, standing there in Under Armour and a backwards snapback pulled over head. He was glad to see she looked more teasing than genuinely angry: a recent development he was more than happy about.

“Well now I just feel lied to,” she said. “You think every young-adult book and movie in existence would just lie?”

Four shook his head, his chuckle probably too low for her to hear. He knew she knew he was laughing anyway.

“I still have twenty minutes before your practice, Tris,” he reminded her.

“No, the ice crew has twenty minutes before my practice to fix this mess  _ your _ team left us.” She crossed her arms in an intimidating display no one who was that small should pull off. “But they can’t do that until you get off the ice.”

Four sighed, skating toward her. “I don’t know why none of  _ them _ could tell me that.”

Tris backed up to let him through the door, following him out. “They’re all afraid of you. Duh. Remember the dramatic brooding I mentioned?”

Four leaned against the wall, putting on his skate guards, and watched Tris as she did the same. “Not you, though.”

Tris looked over at him, balancing on the blade of one skate. She smirked. “What do I have to be afraid of?”

He smiled back.

 

This easy camaraderie between the two hockey captains was not always so easy. They started out in pre-semester barely acquainted yet antagonistic.

It was August and Four had been doing his same slow circles on the ice when this tiny, angry girl stormed onto the ice.

“Hey hot-shot! You mind getting off the ice? Your time ended an hour ago.”

Four skidded to a stop, more confused than anything by this interruption. “So?”

She dramatically rolled her eyes. “ _ So _ , it’s my ice time now. Move.”

Four assessed her. Slight build, powerful looking legs. Figure skater?

“You can have this half,” he offered, diplomatically. “I’ll stay on the other side.”

She looked furious. “Are you an idiot? We need the whole rink! What do you think we’re trying to do here?”

He was even more confused now. “Who is we?”

“The women’s hockey team!” She seethed. “I know there’s a sexism problem at this school – and in sports as a whole – but I would think that the captain of the men’s team could at least  _ acknowledge  _ that the women’s team might need to practice, too.”

“Oh!” He would never have pegged this small girl for a hockey player. He’d seen them play but he was sure he’d never seen someone this small. “The women’s team don’t usually practice this early.”

“Well, we do now. And if you’d bothered checking the rink schedule, you’d know that.”

Four looked at her some more. She wasn’t wrong: he shouldn’t be on the ice this long after their time ended. But he didn’t like the way she talked to him.

“Does your captain know you’re out here?”

She seemed to grow three whole inches.

“I  _ am _ the captain,” she told him, her voice low and dangerous.

Four’s eyebrows shot up. He gave her another once over. “You’re Prior?”

“Tris,” she said by way of a yes. “So you _ have _ heard of me.”

He had. A sophomore being voted captain was incredibly rare. She’d been the lead scorer last season, earning herself a hat trick in the playoffs. Four himself had seen it happen. But he couldn’t reconcile this tiny angry girl with the fast and ruthless number 6 he’d seen play last spring.

Well, maybe the ruthless part.

He took off his glove, extending his hand to the diminutive captain. “I’m Four.”

She took his hand, squeezing roughly. “I know who you are, Tobias Eaton.”

He looked squarely into her eyes, squeezing her hand back so he could feel her knuckles grinding together. “It’s Four.”

Tris didn’t flinch. He actually thought he might see the beginning of respect behind her eyes.

“Get out of my rink, Four.”

 

And he had. They had a grudging respect for each other since that day, calling each other on their bullshit and supporting each other’s teams through the season. Four was a fifth year Criminology student and managed to hold onto the captaincy in his final year. Tris, too, had held onto her title and Four suspected she’d keep it until she graduated. What could be said? They were good at their jobs.

Despite the grudging respect, Four wouldn’t have thought of he and Tris as friends. Not until Tris invited him out for trivia night.

“It’s just my brother,” she’d said, rolling her eyes. “I invite him because he’s smart and I’m in it to  _ win _ , but he’s awkward around girls. Will you come and be a buffer?”

“Come with you and your friends?”

Tris had snorted. “You’re my friend too, doofus.” And then she’d punched him on the shoulder.

So he’d gone to trivia night.

 

It wasn’t as awkward as he’d feared. He hadn’t really spent time with anyone since his best friend, Zeke, had graduated last year. The problem with a 5-year degree is that all of your friends are done in 4. Luckily, it seemed Four now had younger friends.

He knew Tris’s friends, Christina and Lynn, from the women’s hockey team. He only knew their numbers, of course, and had never spoken to them, but they could all fall back on hockey discussion if there was a lull.

Caleb Prior was a completely different story.

“It’s not that I don’t believe in total egalitarianism but the state of equity is completely dependant on the will of a nation’s constituents, and the arc of apathy in this nation in particular will drive us to total corruption. Socialism is a pipe dream, and without financial equity, the opportunity of total egalitarianism is just not feasible.”

Four threw back the rest of his whiskey. “Right.”

Trivia hadn’t even started yet and Caleb had ranted about six different political issues he felt were of the utmost importance. He also had mentioned that he was a Libertarian no less than 15 times.

Four eventually understood  _ why _ Caleb was there when the trivia started. He may be a pseudo-intellectual – a pretentious blowhard who tried too hard to seem smart – but that definitely lent itself to him knowing a lot of menial shit.

And, for whatever reason, Caleb had decided Four was his new best friend.

“I just don’t get it,” Caleb had said, hair a little more disheveled than when he’d come in. Four had discovered early that he got more tolerable the more he drank so he had kept buying Caleb sea breezes. “I never got it when Beatrice wanted to play as kids. What’s so great about hitting things with sticks and getting hit by bigger people who also have sticks?”

Caleb was the only person that called her Beatrice. Her teammates called her 6. Everyone else called her Tris. But Caleb seemed to have that family privilege.

Four shrugged. He’d started responding to Caleb’s questions halfway through trivia which only made Caleb talk to him more but Four was drunk enough not to care.

“Why do people want to be gladiators?”

“Well, historically, the Roman gladiators were actually sold into it through the prison system or as some kind of raid against Christianity–”

“Fun,” Four told him, deadpan. He took another shot. “ _ Glory. _ ”

“But no one remembers the specific gladiators,” Caleb shot back, almost smug. “We remember the politicians and scholars of that time.”

Four snorted. “What use is glory once you’re dead?” He asked. “Back in ancient Rome, women would buy vials of the sweat of their favorite gladiators to wear around their necks. That kind of devotion is what real glory really is. And it can help you while you’re alive, even.”

Caleb reeled back, impressed. “There’s something to that argument.”

Four raised his glass in acknowledgement, shooting it back in one.

He hadn’t meant to get that drunk which meant when the party at the bar broke up, and Caleb had left, Tris treated him with simultaneous guilt and annoyance.

“Jesus Christ, I know my brother is hard to put up with but was this much alcohol intake really necessary?”

Four chuckled, much looser around her than he normally would be. “He’s not so bad.”

This only seemed to alarm Tris. “Oh God, it’s worse than I thought. Come here.”

She slung Four’s arm around her shoulder and started frog marching him out. He’d been more drunk before. He figured he could probably walk under his own steam without embarrassing himself. But he let himself be manhandled because a) Tris may be tiny but he knew she was strong enough to handle his weight and b) it was a good excuse to be close to Tris without all the gross implications that would normally come with Four intentionally getting close to her.

This had been a problem for him for a while. He had a crush on Tris – of  _ course _ he had a crush on Tris – but he couldn’t have crushes like normal people. Because crushes come with expectations of follow-through. And Four could only follow-through so much.

What he _ could _ do though was enjoy the movement of muscles beneath Tris’s skin as she maneavoured him. That he could enjoy a lot.

She dropped him bodily into the passenger seat of her Prius and it became a game of Tetris trying to fit all of his limbs in the tiny space. Four pretended to be more drunk than he was so he wouldn’t have to do any of the work. He wasn’t proud of it. But it was funny to see Tris struggle.

She didn’t seem to have any reservations about touching him – grabbing his thighs and shoulders in a perfunctory, practical way. He appreciated that but he was curious about it. He knew now that they were friends but he also might have thought that they had… maybe… been flirting a little bit. Was he reading things wrong?

Sober Four might have ruminated on that. He might have anguished over it, brooded over it, considered it thoroughly before dismissing it entirely.

Drunk Four did no such thing.

“I probably could have done that,” he told her as she herself collapsed into the driver’s seat. “I’m not that drunk.”

Tris snorted as she started the car.

“I’m too drunk to drive my bike home,” Four corrected, grimacing. He hated leaving his bike overnight. “But I can move my own body.”

Tris raised her eyebrow at him, not looking away from the road. “Then why didn’t you?”

Four shrugged, his body doing this weird tilting thing in his slump. “You were doing such a great job.”

Tris snorted again, but this time she was smiling.

“I actually had a question about that,” he continued, his brain vaguely yelling in the distance.

“Oh?”

Four nodded, pulling himself more upright. “We’ve been flirting and stuff, right?”

Tris’s head jerked back a little, a subtle sign that she was surprised he’d brought it up. “Yeah. Yes, we’ve been flirting.”

“Right.” Four nodded. “So did you manhandle me so impersonally because you were being respectful or because you’re not attracted to me?”

Her surprise was more pronounced now. “Uh…”

Four waited, staring beningly at the side of her face while she drove.

She seemed to puzzle over this question for a while before slumping in her seat. “I’m not sure what answer you want. Because my answer is a little of both.”

Four nodded again. “That is pretty close to the answer I want.”

Tris looked over at him in a double take before looking back to the road. “It is?”

“Yeah,” Four said, slumping into the seat again. “For one, it’s honest. And I like honesty.” He lolled his head to look out the window. “But also I’m asexual so I’d rather you weren’t sexually attracted to me. That would make things easier.”

The voice that had been vaguely yelling at him was now very present in the middle of his forehead. Intellectually (or as intellectually as he could be in his drunken state) he knew there was very little risk in coming out to her. She’d basically admitted the same thing. Well, she hadn’t – she could just mean that flirting with him meant nothing and she wasn’t attracted to him, even romantically. Maybe he didn’t think this through. Maybe that’s why the voice was yelling.

Because he’d never come out to anyone. Not to any girl, anyway. Not anytime it mattered. Zeke knew but only because Zeke had helped him figure it out. No one else knew.

He’d had crushes but he’d let them go, not bothering to take things further knowing he could never go far enough. This thing with Tris felt a little more high stakes. For one, they were both captains of their respective teams that worked very closely together. Four had spent more time with Tris over the past year and a half than anyone else he went to school with. It would be super awkward if things didn’t work out between them.

But also, he had feelings for Tris. Real feelings. It felt high stakes because he’d graduated from casual crush sometime last spring. He was in full-on-infatuation land now. He’d get through a rejection but it would be ten years, probably, before he put himself out there again.

He definitely shouldn’t have gotten so drunk. He shouldn’t have agreed to come out with her in the first place. He should have just pined his way to graduation. That would have been better, probably.

All of this internal turmoil happened between breaths. Between him speaking and Tris asking, “Things like dating?”

Four’s nod was strained, already regretting his entire life and feeling more sober than he’d felt before he’d even left for trivia night. “Things like dating. And the whole ‘asexual’ conversation.”

“Oh, you mean the conversation where people ask if you’re a plant? And that’s if they’ve even  _ heard _ the word ‘asexual’ before. Usually it’s ‘what’s that?’ and ‘You’ll grow out of it.’ Or, my favorite, ‘All women feel like that but you have to have sex if you want to get a boyfriend.’”

Four blinked. “Yeah.”

Tris snorted. “Yeah. I’m familiar.”

Four sat up, slowly. “So we don’t have to have that conversation.”

“No. I would rather we didn’t.”

Four watched Tris drive. Her cheeks had pinked slightly but she was smiling, softly.

He waited until she’d parked outside of his apartment. He hadn’t known she knew were it was.

“I’ll see you at the rink?”

Tris turned to him, smirking in full force. “Yes, you will.”

 

And she did. She barged onto the ice during his post-practice cool down, as usual, but instead of yelling at him, she smiled.

“Let’s go out.”

Four could feel his mouth start to spread in a grin. He bit it down. “Like a date?”

“Like a lot of dates,” she answered. She needed to crane her neck to look up at him but her confidence and her presence made her fill up the whole room. “Be my boyfriend. Let’s be  _ that _ cliche. The captain of the girl’s and boy’s team are boyfriend/girlfriend. It’ll be gross. We have to.”

Four’s stomach jumped at the word ‘girlfriend.’ He’d given up a long time ago on ever having one of those.

“Well, if we  _ have _ to.” He grinned.

She grinned back, reaching up (and up and up) to cup his cheek. “Can I kiss your face?”

“I would love for my girlfriend to kiss my face.”

Which was a good thing too because he had to do most of the work to bend down to her. Her lips were soft and undemanding.

Which was exactly what he hoped the rest of their relationship would be.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> [Rebloggable Version](https://jessieliveblogs.tumblr.com/post/175460224637/aces-in-hockey)


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